Rogue Trader | |
---|---|
Directed by | James Dearden |
Written by | James Dearden |
Based on | Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World by Nick Leeson Edward Whitley |
Produced by | Janette Day James Dearden Paul Raphael |
Starring | Ewan McGregor Anna Friel |
Narrated by | Ewan McGregor |
Cinematography | Jean-François Robin |
Edited by | Catherine Creed |
Music by | Richard Hartley |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Pathé Distribution |
Release date |
|
Running time | 101 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $12,800,000 (estimated) |
Box office | £969,565 (UK sub-total) |
Rogue Trader is a 1999 British biographical drama film written and directed by James Dearden and starring Ewan McGregor and Anna Friel. The film centers on the life of former derivatives broker Nick Leeson and the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank.
Following an interview with Nick Leeson in prison, Sir David Frost realised the potential for a movie and optioned the rights to Nick's story. Frost executive produced the film, which was based on Leeson's 1996 book Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World .
Rogue Trader tells the true story of Nick Leeson, a young employee of Barings Bank who after a successful spell working for the firm's office in Indonesia is sent to Singapore as General Manager of the Trading Floor on the SIMEX exchange. The movie follows Leeson's rise as he soon becomes one of Barings' key traders. However, everything isn't as it appears – through the 88888 error account, Nick is hiding huge losses as he gambles away Barings' money with little more than the bat of an eyelid from the powers-that-be back in London.
Eventually the losses mount up to well over £800 million and Nick, along with his wife Lisa, decide to leave Singapore and escape to Malaysia. Nick doesn't realise the severity of his losses until he reads in the newspaper that Barings has gone bankrupt. They then decide to return to London but Nick is arrested en route in Frankfurt. Nick is extradited to Singapore where he is sentenced to six and a half years in jail and is diagnosed with colon cancer. Because of this, he did not complete his sentence.
Rogue Trader was released on 25 June 1999 in the United Kingdom and the United States. It was distributed by Pathé in the United Kingdom and Cinemax in the United States. It flopped at the box office, earning less than £1,000,000 in the UK. [1] [2]
During a bar scene, the Blur song "Song 2" is heard playing. This is an anachronism as the song was not released until three years after the scene was set.
Rogue Trader was poorly received by critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, of 30% of 23 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.9/10. [3]
Barings Bank was a British merchant bank based in London, and one of England's oldest merchant banks after Berenberg Bank, Barings' close collaborator and German representative. It was founded in 1762 by Francis Baring, a British-born member of the German–British Baring family of merchants and bankers.
Nicholas William Leeson is an English former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorised and speculative trades resulted in the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's second oldest merchant bank. He was convicted of financial crime in a Singapore court and served over four years in Changi Prison.
Anna Louise Friel is an English actress. She first achieved fame as Beth Jordache in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside (1993–1995), later coming to international prominence with her role as Charlotte "Chuck" Charles on ABC's Pushing Daisies (2007–2009), for which she received a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. In 2017, she won the International Emmy for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title character in the ITV/Netflix mystery drama series Marcella (2016–2021). Her other accolades include a Drama Desk Award, an honorary degree, and a BAFTA nomination.
Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World is a book by Nick Leeson, who served four years in prison for fraud after bankrupting the London-based Barings Bank in 1995 by hiding $1.4 billion in debt he accumulated as a derivatives trader in Singapore. The book was released on February 19, 1996, by Little, Brown & Company.
A Life Less Ordinary is a 1997 British romantic black comedy film directed by Danny Boyle, written by John Hodge, and starring Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo, Ian Holm and Dan Hedaya. The plot follows two angels who are sent to Earth to help make a disgruntled kidnapper (McGregor) and his hostage (Diaz) fall in love.
Nightwatch is a 1997 American horror thriller film directed by Ole Bornedal and starring Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin and Nick Nolte. It was written by Bornedal and Steven Soderbergh. It is a remake of the 1994 Danish film of the same name, which was also directed by Bornedal.
A rogue trader is person who makes financial trades in an unauthorised manner.
Miss Potter is a 2006 biographical drama film directed by Chris Noonan. It is based on the life of children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, and combines stories from her own life with animated sequences featuring characters from her stories, such as Peter Rabbit. Scripted by Richard Maltby Jr., the director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway revue, Fosse, the film stars Renée Zellweger in the title role, Ewan McGregor as her publisher and fiancé, Norman Warne, and Lloyd Owen as solicitor William Heelis. Emily Watson stars as Warne's sister, Millie. Lucy Boynton also stars as the young Beatrix Potter and Justin McDonald appears as the young William Heelis. It was filmed in St. Peter's Square Hammersmith, Cecil Court, Osterley Park, Covent Garden, the Isle of Man, Scotland and the Lake District.
The Serpent's Kiss is a 1997 British romantic drama film directed by Philippe Rousselot. Set in late-17th-century England, it tells the story of a Dutch garden architect, Meneer Chrome, who has been hired by a wealthy merchant to create an extravagant garden. The film also stars Greta Scacchi and Richard E. Grant.
Deception is a 2008 American erotic thriller film directed by Marcel Langenegger and written by Mark Bomback. It stars Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, and Michelle Williams. The film was released on April 25, 2008 in the United States.
Lawrence Ang Boon Kong is a Singaporean lawyer who specialises in corporate offences and criminal law.
Re Barings plc [2000] 1 BCLC 523 is a leading UK company law case, concerning company directors' duties of care and skill. The case is formally identified and cited as "No 5", though some observers regard it as the sixth in the saga of litigation concerning Barings Bank.
In financial trading, a rogue trader is an employee authorized to make trades on behalf of their employer who makes unauthorized trades. It can also involve mismarking of securities. The perpetrator is a legitimate employee of a company, but enters into transactions on behalf of their employer, or mismarks securities held by their employer, without their employer's permission.
In January 2008, the bank Société Générale lost approximately €4.9 billion closing out positions over three days of trading beginning January 21, 2008, a period in which the market was experiencing a large drop in equity indices. The bank states these positions were fraudulent transactions created by Jérôme Kerviel, a trader with the company. The police stated they lacked evidence to charge him with fraud and charged him with breach of trust and illegally accessing computers. Kerviel states his actions were known to his superiors and that the losses were caused by panic selling by the bank. Société Générale's own wrongs were later established by a French jurisdiction, which led the Cour de cassation to cancel the €4.9 billion sanction on Kerviel.
Inside Story Special: £830,000,000 – Nick Leeson and the Fall of the House of Barings, sometimes referred to as 25 Million Pounds, is a 1996 British television documentary by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It details the collapse of Barings Bank in the mid-1990s due to the machinations of Nick Leeson, who lost £827 million primarily by speculating on futures contracts.
Beginners is a 2010 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Mike Mills. It tells the story of a man reflecting on the life and death of his father, while trying to forge a new romantic relationship with a woman dealing with father-issues of her own. The film is based on the coming out of Mills' own father at the age of 75, five years before his death.
The 2011 UBS rogue trader scandal caused a loss of over US$2 billion at Swiss bank UBS, as a result of unauthorized trading performed by Kweku Adoboli, a director of the bank's Global Synthetic Equities Trading team in London in early September 2011.
Kweku Adoboli is a Ghanaian investment manager and former stock trader. He was convicted of illegally trading away US$2 billion as a trader for Swiss investment bank UBS. While at the bank he primarily worked on UBS' Global Synthetic Equities Trading team in London, where he engaged in what would later be known as the 2011 UBS rogue trader scandal. After serving a prison sentence, he lost several appeals against the UK Home Office decision to deport him to Ghana.
The Birthday Cake is a 2021 American crime thriller film directed by Jimmy Giannopoulos, from a screenplay by Diomedes Raul Bermudez, Shiloh Fernandez and Giannopoulos. It is the feature directorial debut for Giannopoulos, who previously directed short films and worked with Miley Cyrus, A$AP Rocky, Kid Cudi, and others on music projects. This is the last movie Paul Sorvino starred in at the time of his death on July 25, 2022.